The first elder from the Underworld School was still standing up there in the skies away from Bai Yunfei and the others. He was staring at the battle with a strange expression. He had been thinking about joining the fray a moment ago, but when he saw that neither Zheng Kai or Bai Yunfei were in danger, he decided to refrain for the time being.

His eyes lingered on the black-scaled serpent for a decent amount of time before he started to mutter to himself. “What a blunder, the black-scaled serpent is already at the level of a mid-stage class seven while we weren’t looking. How strange....did it have some good fortune recently?”

Incidents of good fortune weren’t just limited to soul cultivators. The world was fraught with soulbeasts, and where the soulbeasts lived was a place where plenty of rare things could be found, meaning the chances of something good happening was high. Soulbeasts finding some type of rare natural resource and consuming it to help their training wasn’t a very rare occurence.

But ones that could help a class seven soulbeast increase in strength so substantially were a lot harder to find. The first elder had even made sure of there being none by looking all around and even in the serpent’s nest before.

“Those two soulbeasts became class seven only a while ago. It won’t be easy for them to fight the black-scaled serpent....and those two youngsters are only Soul Exalts. I might have to fight after all.....” The first elder decided, albeit with some hesitation. He wanted to see Bai Yunfei fight and see just what the disciple of Zi Jin could really do. Unfortunately for him, Bai Yunfei was doing nothing but watch the fight from the sidelines without actually fighting himself.

Something strange in the vicinity of the battle then caught the first elder’s eyes, “That’s....”

He was still staring at Bai Yunfei, who had been nearly motionmless up to this point. His left hand waved once before a flash of white light flowed out from it and subsequently had a white figure dash out into view in front of him.

“Ha!!!”

And for some strange reason, Bai Yunfei shouted out loud!

Before the first elder could even think of a response to that, another three cries came out at the same time!

“Chirp!”

“Roar!!”

“Aooo!!!”

Xiao Qi, Long Lan, and even the permafrost mastiff were all crying out at once with Bai Yunfei!

The shouts of theirs weren’t just an ordinary one, they were each a....soul attack!

The combined efforts of three class seven soulbeasts’ soul attacks and then Bai Yunfei’s Soul Sentinel Scarf boosted pseudo-soul attack were all heading towards the black-scaled serpent!

It was a good bet to say that aside from Bai Yunfei, Xiao Qi, and Long Lan, no one else expected for this development to happen. The black-scaled serpent was already warpped around Long Lan’s foot and was slowly winning the fight when it was struck with different soul attacks without warning!

The eyes of the serpent dilated to practically slits and the serpent started to quiver violently once struck. Loosening from its grip onto the blue-eyes white wyrm, the serpent fell to the ground where it then hissed with an increasingly angry cry.

“Hiss!!”

It was a hiss that was just as loud as the roars that came at it earlier. Noisy and loud, the hiss just barely weak enough for Zheng Kai to get away with just wincing in pain and plugging his ears in retreat.

This hiss was a soul attack just like the other roars were!

The class seven black-scaled serpent—while being a soulbeast with low sentience—was still capable of a soul attack. It deigned not to use it during this fight since one of those was somewhat useless in a fight between class seven without the proper moment. They were regularly meant as last resorts or the the prelude to a finishing blow. In this current case, the serpent was in mortal peril and had to call out the strongest soul attack it could do.

The contest of strength between soul attacks started and ended quickly with the black-scaled serpent convulsing on the ground and letting out a panicked hiss!

Individually, the black-scaled is the strongest of the four. But in a battle of one against four, the black-scaled serpent was no match for Bai Yunfei and the three soulbeasts!

There was a mournful hiss as the serpent coiled in on itself, forming the shape of a fried dough stick with black energy wisping off of it rather than steam. Its soulforce was heavily disturbed now, and a large amount of it was disseminating into the air along with the dark energy. Whatever plant life in the area that it touched, the plant life quickly started to dry up and wither.

“Roar!!”

First came an angry roar, then came a loud explosion. Long Lan made the first move by taking two large steps forward and swinging his large tail firmly onto the serpent!

“Bang!!”

The serpent was flung backwards into the mountain behind it!

Before the serpent could collide into it, five black blades flew forward to hit it mid-route—these were the Spatial Edges of Xiao Qi!

With how large the serpent was and how evenly spaced the Spatial Edges were apart from one another, the serpent would without a doubt be cut into several bloody chunks if it continued on backwards!

The black-scaled serpent was clearly feeling the impending doom it was in even despite the flummox it was in due to the soul attacks earlier. Somehow managing to twists its body mid-flight, the serpent thrashed out with its tail. There was a bang as its tail collided with a seemingly invisible wall and flew off into a perpendicular direction away from the Spatial Edges, thus allowing it to escape with its life!

But even though it managed to make it out with its life, its maneuver didn’t fully allow the serpent to escape fully unscathed. A single Spatial Edge had managed to shear through a segment of its tail....

“Pcht....”

Dark red blood erupted from the two halves of the serpent before a six meter long portion of the tail dropped from the skies.

“Hisssssss!!!”

“Boom!”

There was a short-lived hissing sound of pain from the serpent before it crashed into the mountain. Stone and dust flew everywhere as a crater formed where it landed.

Amidst the dust cloud, the serpent’s eyes were now filled with fear. For once since this battle started, the serpent was fearing for its life. No longer willing to fight, the serpent turned its injured body around to face the mountain it was in. Curving back its head, the serpent shot a hundred meters up into the air before spinning vertically and coming back down onto the mountain!

Was it....trying to kill itself by slamming into the mountain rather than die by the hands of Bai Yunfei?

But rather than falling to the ground in a bloody mess, the serpent disappeared from sight!

And in its place, a cave ten meters in circumference opened up in the mountain!

Bai Yunfei’s eyes were wide open when he realized what the serpent had done. He really hadn’t expected that the combined strength of four different soul attacks would still not be enough to kill the black-scaled serpent!

Truly, it was unexpected for the black-scaled serpent to survive against something like that. And not only had it managed to avoid Xiao Qi’s carefully aimed Spatial Edges, it managed to escape with a light enough wound to hide into the mountain!

In his mind, Bai Yunfei was fully expectant that the serpent would’ve died at the hands of Xiao Qi. But.....it dodged them! Not only did it dodge the Spatial Edges, it was running away!

So stunned was Bai Yunfei by this that he stood there, motionless and completely forgetting about reacting to this development.

“F*ck!! You’re letting it run after all that? Are you crazy?! Yunfei, hurry up and think of something! It’s going to be impossible to kill if you let it hide in the mountain!”

Zheng Kai slapped Bai Yunfei on the shoulder to jolt him out from his stupor.

The slap roused Bai Yunfei back to normal. The muscles on Bai Yunfei’s face twitched angrily, but Zheng Kai didn’t know if that was from him losing composure or from the serpent not dying.

“I think it’s burrowing into the heart of the mountain. This isn’t good, how do we force it out...?”

“Bzzz.....”

A faint buzzing sound caused Zheng Kai to pause briefly. Realizing the sudden rising of temperature, he looked up just in time to see a giant ‘fiery stone block’ appear over his head.....

And it was growing even larger in size!

Bai Yunfei’s left hand called the permafrost mastiff back into its ring. He canceled the ‘coil’ form with his right hand and had his second fireseed go back into the Cataclysmic Seal. Once deposited, the fireseed roused the Cataclysmic Seal and had it start to expand in size.....

Bai Yunfei stared angrily at the mountain in front of him and felt the aura of the serpent grow farther and farther into the mountain.

“Push it!!”

He spat those two words vehemently.